


The Practice of Doctor Skingood

by DizzIzzi



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Original Work
Genre: 1920s, Body Horror, Cthulhu Mythos, Gen, Graphic Description, Horror, Kinda, M/M, New England, POV First Person, POV Male Character, Queer Themes, cosmic horror, if you know where to look/how to look, inspired by a podcast, queer people in the 1920s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27309682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DizzIzzi/pseuds/DizzIzzi
Summary: Just a little something for HalloweenA poor, unfortunate man's attempt to describe that which should not be, but is.
Relationships: Original Male Character & Original Male Character, if you squint it's M/M
Kudos: 2





	The Practice of Doctor Skingood

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Hallow's Eve everybody! It's been a loooong while since I've posted here--between school, depression, writer's block and the pandemic I'll admit I haven't written so much as two paragraphs in months! Here's a work of (kinda) original fiction I've had floating around for about a year now and, well, since it's Halloween I thought I'd release it as a sort of apology for not updating anything else I've written. I was inspired for this work by the beautiful people over at the Duckfeed.tv network of podcasts who came up with the original entity that this short story owes its name (and antagonist) to. Check out episode 310 of Abject Suffering, "A.R.E.S.: Extinction Agenda" for their invention of the mythos of Dr. Skingood.
> 
> Cheers!

There was not a time that I could remember when I did not know Emillio Smith; I have asked those who knew us best and if they are to be believed we exited the womb hand in hand. Emillio was— _is_ —my truest confidant, my dearest companion, and “the face that stares back at me in the mirror” as he would say. We were reared together, matured together, even dreamed of growing old together, but now…

It was the summer of our twenty-fifth year when it happened, that awful pestilence which hung in the air and creaked with the cicadas. Having left college on the West Coast behind we had returned to our childhood home of Mansfield at the end of the spring; if we had only known what was to come, I would have insisted we pursue Emillio’s Masters with more than a passing fervor. Our house was long gone of course, “renovated” into some doctor’s practice or other, so we spent a portion of our ill-gotten wages on a room in Mrs. B’s home—ten dollars a week plus expenses. I had thought it worth it at the time.

Had we only guessed at what horror lurked across the sleepy, mist-cloaked streets we could have seen the signs, seen the man in the yellow raincoat for what he truly is. As it was, we, fools that we were, thought little had changed about our town; maybe that assumption was correct all along, we were simply too naïve to notice. The corner store still stood, ancient in its regality, just as the modest public library where we spent altogether too much of our time turning those wrinkled pages in search of the adventure we could not see around us. Even the school, sporting a fresh coat of white and red, felt the same to our fresh new eyes.

The police report Emillio Smith as missing on the Thirteenth but I, I know better—Emillio Smith had been gone since the Seventh and only I could have noticed it. He did not reveal how either of us came to be entrapped in this horrible contraption we, even now, are bound to; the details, I trust, to be too traumatizing even for my calloused ear. My truest friend in all the world arrived late that day, his movements jilted and like a newborn babe’s in their uncertainty that, at first, I thought him drunk. With slurred words and feeble excuses Emillio brushed my concerns aside and, with some mental difficulty, staggered into our shared room. I am the last to truly “see” him as he was.

Come the morning Emillio had fled our shared bed without word or trace but by midday had returned, much refreshed, to take late breakfast with myself and our temporary landlady. He ate little, citing his earlier absence as just cause for not working his mouth overmuch, and the events of the night prior began to fade. It was not until he suggested, in his mild-mannered façade, that we visit the attraction that had so captivated him the day before. Emillio only referred to the place as “magical” but the twinkle in his dull, shimmering eyes spoke of the kind of trouble both of us liked to inflict upon others. And so, with pounding heart, must I reveal the depths of my infringement upon God and Nature for what I did, what I did was truly monstrous.

The building he led the two of us to—middle-aged and achingly lonely Mrs. B and I—gave me shivers, it felt so familiar. Red brick, in the style of nearly a century ago, the little door with its tiny sign stood scrunched between the hairdresser’s and the burnt-out old husk of ol’ Scrapy’s place, God take his soul. The sign, so innocuous in its neat, printed letters, proclaimed:

“Mr. Good’s Epidermal Emporium”

Now Emillio, poor Emillio, proclaimed the proprietor to be a wonder of the world, a wizard in the truest sense with skin and skincare. Had I followed my gut, heeded the klaxons running bumps and a sticky pallor up and down my skin I might have at least saved one more from the fate hidden within but, oh take me, I followed Emillio’s—if he could still be called by that name—inferred plan and all but escorted the innocent Mrs. B within, only to feign a dizzying spell at the eleventh hour.

Like the rush of wind through my hair I bolted towards the employee entrance round the back of the block, hoping to be given free access for the upcoming japery. To my sudden, prescient horror I found no door, no entrance, nor any sort of employee lot, no doors nor fire escape anywhere on that block. Far too late I realized my error, my folly, in going along with such schemes as the bricks I had known from youth now kept such tight rank as to be one continuous building, one seamless mass of angry reds and blood-soaked browns. My feet could not carry me fast enough.

As if I was trapped in a dream the walls of that building stretched on and on, further and further to keep me from my goal. My lungs were lit by a belching forge while my throat became its chimney as time slowed around me, people phasing into blurry, nightmarish caricatures of normalcy and form as the corner finally, finally thundered under my boot. The sound of leather screaming accompanied my hasty sprint as the door to the “Emporium” came into view. The door, without lock or key, was just as ajar as I had left it. Tinted windows inky black like the night sky to deceive the unwary and unworthy. I burst in with no thought given to anything save Emillio.

The room, for at its heart that is all it was, held the patina of disused dust across its paneled floor, no light-source presented itself to me, not even an item to stop the door. My eyes knew better than to look, you see, at the single set of tracks as they led towards the center, towards the gaping, teeth-filled descent into the murky bowels. With terror comes stupidity and I let myself be led by something I, to this day, cannot place into those waiting, yellowed jaws.

Eternities might have passed as I went, one foot before the next, deep into the beating heart of this madness, I cannot remember. All that is important is that I _arrived_. Unlike the room far above this cell I found myself in was made of wet stone given eerie luminescence by some unknown emerald glow. It did not feel like home, like the placid brick of rural New England, no, it felt alien and otherworldly, like I had stepped into a fantastical yet sinister realm found only in the darkest recess of the mind. I wanted to leave all this behind and I would have, were it not for the scream.

Like the sound of a knife as it hacks hide, this scream—for if it was not then what sleepless horror could it be?—bounded off unseeable walls and ceilings to crush headlong into my ears; the sheer force enough to bring me to tears. A wail, piercing and as inhuman as a dog’s, never-the-less carried within it that trait unique to mankind, language. Whether it was a plea or curse I’ll never want to know for as it grew so too did the pulsating on the walls. I begged my limbs to flee, to take me far from this unholy happening but neither replied, I was rooted to the spot.

Just as I, too, opened my mouth to scream in the vain hope someone might hear I saw… A figure, misshapen, with only the faintest hints of the human form, shuffled in the shadows just out of sight. I could not hear but it, too, was making noise, a warbling groan like that of someone without proper use of their faculties; the form crawled on all its limbs towards me. The shadows from further in fled the touch of the flickering sheen giving me better access to the shape approaching me. All I could do was scream, even if it would not leave my throat. A limp, sinewy cadaver, the rippling mass of meat held together somehow in the form of a human man, scraped one foot in front of the other, its sightless sockets swiveled to lock with mine as the jaw of this… monster, flapped. I could see the bone of the nose making a wheezing cavern as it stepped into the pulsating light.

I could not move, no words would form, no thought other than sheer bodily revulsion coursed through my veins—I was going to die like this thing had in the dark nightmare world deep below my home. Sinew rolled and furrowed across where a brow should be, slack muscle jerking as if grasping for something just out of reach. A raw hand raised towards me. I swear to all that might still be holy that I heard a voice— _his_ voice—as that featureless, burgundy-green mannequin opened its jaws, saying

“I feel so cold…”

I do not know if what found me in that dark, unknowable dungeon was all that was left of my dear Emillio Smith or if there was something… more. When I finally managed to calm my racing mind and go to the authorities there was nothing out of the sorts with “Mr. Good’s Epidermal Emporium,” no sign or trace of the one person in the whole world who could have proved me not mad. I was questioned of course, but who would believe a madman let alone one raving about skinless phantoms? In the end all I can hope for is a little poster with his name and face and the sinking certainty that, one day, he will return to me. I do not know if I should be afraid or quiver in rapturous hope—I should lock my doors tighter regardless.

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who read my other works, I want to apologize once again for my lack of content. It's probably going to be continuing for some more time sadly because for some bloody reason I CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO WRITE THE BITS THAT NEED WRITING!!!  
> Do know that I haven't abandoned writing, AO3, or all of you, I'm just really not good at interacting in an online setting and haven't had anything to post in what feels like forever. I promise works like "The Tale of Amyr the Bard!" will get finished and new works in new fandoms published! Just... it will probably be a while...
> 
> Sadly yet Sincerely  
> Your Author  
> -Izzi


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